As a team, Canadian figure skating had two goals coming into the Sochi Olympics.

One was to win the team competition, which proved to be a bit of a pipe dream as the Evgeni Plushenko-led Russians steam-rolled over the field, though Canada did finish a respectable second to earn the silver medal.

The goal now is for Canadian skaters to win a team record four medals in the individual events. It’s almost certain that three-time men’s singles champion Patrick Chan will medal, as will defending Olympic ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. The big question is, whether they’ll win gold. Where the breakthrough in medal count may come, and what might push Canada over the top in terms of earning a record four individual medals at one Winter Olympics, is in the pairs competition.

Because of the success of Chan and Virtue and Moir, Canada’s top pairs team have received the short end of the stick in terms of garnering the attention they deserve. The truth of the matter is Canada has two medal-potential pairs teams entered in these Games — 2013 world championship bronze medallists Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford from Lively Ont., and Balmertown, Ont., and Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club members Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch, who finished fourth at the same worlds and medalled at two Grand Prix events this season.

The individual figure skating competitions kick off on Tuesday with the pairs short. The Russian team of Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov, the reigning world champions, are hoping to become the first skaters to win Olympic gold in the pairs event on home ice in 78 years. Another favourite for the gold is the German pair of Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, who beat out Duhamel and Radford for the silver by less than two points at the 2013 worlds. The Germans defeated the Russians at the Grand Prix Final in December. Moore-Towers and Moscovitch lost out on the bronze at the 2013 worlds by less than a point. It’s certainly possible that the two Canadian teams could beat out the Germans for silver and bronze in Sochi.

Both Duhamel and Radford, in the short, and Moore-Towers and Moscovitch, in the long, had solid skates in the team event earlier this week, finishing second to their Russian counterparts in both events. Of course, both Canadian teams want to win, but there is a camaraderie between the two teams.

“I think the whole Canadian team is very tight,” said Moscovitch, a native of Waterloo, ON. “We like to think as ourselves as a family. Eric and I have been best friends for a long time. He used to live with my family. We go way back.”

Another medal contender in the pairs is the Chinese team of Pang Qing and Tong Jian, silver medallists at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Of course, the biggest focus by Canadian figure skating fans will be on Chan, as the Toronto native attempts to become the first Canadian to win a men’s singles title in an Olympic Games. Chan has six days to get over his disappointing team singles short program, where he finished third behind Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu and Russia’s Plushenko. Plushenko has a chance to win a record fifth Olympic medal in the men’s singles competition, passing the previous record of held by Gillis Grafstrom of Sweden, who won three successive Olympic golds in 1920, 1924 and 1928, as well as a silver in Lake Placid in 1932.

“Evgeni has charisma and power. Maybe somebody does not like him, but the majority loves him and respects him,” said Plushenko’s coach Alexei Mishin. “The minority is jealous.”

It’s been an up and down season for the Ottawa-born Chan, who set world records in the long and short earlier in the year at the Trophee Eric Bompard Grand Prix, but then lost to 19-year-old Hanyu later at the Grand Prix Final when the Japanese skater eclipsed Chan’s short program world mark.

The other intriguing event for Canadian fans will be the ice dance. After losing to Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White in the team competition in Sochi, defending Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have now lost to their rivals from the U.S. four straight times and have to figure out a way to push the right buttons for the gold medal.

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RUSSIA’S REVENGE

The Russians were humiliated four years ago at the Vancouver Olympics when they were shut out of a gold medal in figure skating.

At the time, the Russian skating federation vowed to get its house in order, and winning the gold in the new team competition on Sunday was a great first step. Ice dancer Elena Ilinykh said the gold in the team event proves that not only is Russia back, they’re the dominate power again in world skating.

“Russia will fight to the end,” she said. “Russia is the best. Russian figure skating is coming back, and that’s the message we want to send to the world.”

There seems to be a very good chance that the Russians will win medals, and possibly a couple of golds, in every event. Evgeni Plushenko dazzled the crowds in the men’s team singles, as did 15-year-old Julia Lipnitskaia in the women’s portion of the event. The Russians have the defending world champions — Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov — in the pairs and their ice dance team of Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov finished third in the team event. What made Sunday’s team win extra special for home side was they won the gold in front of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“I was told by the masseur, the president was there and my heart started beating even faster,” said Ilinykh. “It’s so exciting skating in front of the home crowd and having the president watching us.”